Charlotte Ponce was just 3 months old when her biological parents left her alone and her face was brutally mauled by a pet raccoon -- leaving the girl with no nose or ear.

Her great-aunt and uncle, Sharon and Tim Ponce from Spring Lake, Mich., saw the horrific story of her disfigurement on the TV news and stepped in to adopt Charlotte and her older brother Marshall.

“The raccoon pretty much ate the right side of her face, all the way back to the ear,” said Sharon Ponce, 54. “Her right side is totally scarred and she’s had three surgeries to remove some of it almost two years ago.”

Now, a decade later, Charlotte, 11, is undergoing a revolutionary surgical procedure that will recreate the ear that she lost in the animal attack. The six- to eight-hour operation began earlier today and is expected to be finished by around 2 p.m. central time, according to Beaumont Children's Hospital.

“There is a certain amount of nervousness,” said Sharon Ponce. “It’s hard when your child is going into surgery, but we are confident the doctor knows what he is doing –- he’s done it before.”

Plastic surgeon Dr. Kongkrit Chaiyasate, who has already crafted a new nose for Charlotte, will build an ear by cutting cartilage from her ribs, a procedure that has been done only twice before.

“What you do here is you need a framework and you put that framework under an area of skin to allow the framework to stay and become part of the body,” he told ABC News affiliate WXYZ.

He said he has been practicing shaping the ear on a potato.

“Dr. Chaiyasate will pull a piece of the rib and mold it into the shape of an ear and put inside her forearm to grow,” said hospital spokesman Mark Geary. “Then, eight weeks later, they will remove it and attach it to her ear.”

Chris Clark/The Grand Rapids Press/AP Photo

PHOTO: Charlotte Ponce gets a kiss from her dad, Tim Ponce, before surgery at Beaumont Children's Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich., April 15, 2014.

Previously, Charlotte had a prosthetic ear put in by a doctor at another hospital and it got infected,” Geary said. “She had a hole where the ear was, but she can still hear and now she will have an actual normal-looking ear.”

Scarring on Charlotte’s upper lip and cheek had been previously corrected.

“Now, all she wants is to wear two earrings,” said her mother. “It sounds kind of weird but she was looking forward to the surgery, saying, ‘When can I go again?’ You have to meet her; she is such a special kid –- one of a kind.”

Charlotte’s ordeal began in 2002, when she and her brother Marshall, now 13, were left alone in a pool barn, which her parents had converted into an apartment.

“They had a couple of raccoons as pets,” said Sharon Ponce, whose brother is the children’s grandfather. “Their mother went next door and I don’t know if the dad was supposed to be watching the kids. A raccoon got in the house and I figured he was hungry, because they weren’t feeding them. The reason he probably ate the right side of her face was because of the drool.”

Courtesy Beaumont Children’s Hospital

PHOTO: Charlotte Ponce with her mother before surgery to create a new ear at Beaumont Children’s Hospital in Michigan.